The Curriculum Challenge!

As an SLP in the schools, it is always a goal each year to incorporate the classroom curriculum into speech therapy sessions as much as possible.  Many speech and language students have curriculum vocabulary goals or comprehension skills goals that correlate to those skills necessary in the classroom environment.  As SLPs, our overall goal is to teach our students strategies in order to be successful academically and socially, and to eventually no longer require speech and language services.  But how can we incorporate the curriculum as much as possible into our speech sessions?

One way to battle this challenge is to use the classroom themes into speech sessions.  Are the classroom teachers using holiday, seasonal, or themes in their classrooms?  Design your lessons using storybooks and activities that use that same vocabulary.  It can be difficult to find common time to plan with all teachers on your caseload.  You can send monthly e-mails or make a form for teachers to complete with concepts and themes they plan on using that month or week.

Do you work with older students?  They may not be working on seasonal vocabulary but science and social studies concepts.  Again, you can send monthly or weekly e-mails or have a form for teachers to complete with what they plan on working on.  Another trick, walk around!  Many teachers hang student work in their classrooms and in the hallways.  Take a look to see what they are working on.  Another trick, ask your students!  You will be surprised how much they can share with you.  I like to ask them early in the week what they are working on and I will have activities ready to go the next time they come in with vocabulary concepts they told me about.  Use the internet to research vocabulary lists related to the topics they are working on if you do not have access to curriculum maps or textbooks.

Those are just some tips and ideas to help battle the curriculum challenge.  It is important for us, as SLPs in the schools, to incorporate the classroom curriculum into our therapy sessions as much as possible.  It helps make our therapy sessions relevant and promotes carryover of learned skills into the classrooms.  It also impresses and pleases our colleagues, which is always a bonus!